My girlfriend has decided to upgrade her horrid dellium netbook and go for a mini itx set up...and bought her self a antek skeleton mini itx case that comes with a 90wat psu plus a 500gb 2.5 hardrive and a basic lg dvd rw.....so this leaves ram, motherboard cpu and maybe graphics cards......It will be running either Ubuntu or ultimate ubuntu and will be used for photo and video editing (youtube quality) plus she wants all the compiz effects...now this is were im like *gulp* I kno nothing about mini atx set ups she bought this behind my back kinda so I could not ask questions at the shop.....I have no idea wat mini atx motherboard I should get, will I need a graphics card will the 90 psu be fine, Im looking at novatek website and I havent a foggiest idea were to start my main concern is the 90wat psu......can any 1 point me in the rite direction of motherboards and if I should even waste my time with a graphics card?........women and shiny things :/

Last edited by Robert109 on Mon May 23, 2011 12:42 pm, edited 5 times in total.

What you need is a modern Mini-ITX board with onboard video, like the new Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 Mini-ITX Motherboard, add in some 4 GB SODIMM RAM (also available from this shop), which is essential for video editing. She should be done in 150 quid, less shipping that is. Fortunately, the mini-itx store is a UK based operation, so shouldn't be too costly

Note: I've only inquired there once, never did business with them! (because the part I inquired about wasn't available )

Of course you could find said combination (main board+RAM) elsewhere, perhaps even cheaper....

Using a mini itx board will she beable to use compiz and other media based editing...I tried to do some research and wat I found is its basicly a nettop..not much of an upgrade of her netbook :/...please tell me im wrong...i did send itx-mini.com an email but no reply yet

sorry should have stated I had a look at the antek mini skeleton and it comes with the 90 watt power brick that plugs into the back of the case.....Im assuming and please correct me if Im wrong...If I bought a itx mini board and a graphics card all id have to do is change the power brick to the correct wattage?

You don't need a graphics card. First of all, it's already on the mainboard and there's simply no room for it anyway... And the 90W power-brick is enough. Get yourself a board with nVidia graphics, these are better supported then the ATI/AMD Radeon chips. Example: Asus AT5IONT-I Fanless Dual Core 1.8GHz Atom ION2 Mini-ITX Board with USB 3.0 at £119 (ex-VAT). Add 2x 2GB RAM (SODIMM, also available from mini-itx.com) and a 120 GB SSD drive. This setup will scream past any benchmarks (not really, but it's pretty fast anyway )

I finnaly recieved an email from mini-itx and a long story short the case my partner bought wouldnt be be able support a motherboard that could handle the task...not enuff power supplyied ah well thanks for your help guys.....so took the case back and got instore refund...got £90 to spend on some parts to make a mirco atx form factor mite get graphics card so she can duel boot into windows for her sim 3 games :/......Anything I should look out for?